Art Nouveau European Route

Constructing the Viennese Modern Body: Art, Hysteria, and the Puppet

Abingdon, 17.07.2018
| Published by coupDefouet

The publication Constructing the Viennese Modern Body: Art, Hysteria, and the Puppet takes a new, interdisciplinary approach to analysing modern Viennese visual culture, informed by Austro-German theatre, contemporary medical treatises centred on hysteria and an original examination of dramatic gestures in expressionist artworks. It centres on the following question: how and to what end was the human body discussed, portrayed, and utilised as an aesthetic metaphor in turn-of-the-century Vienna? By scrutinising theatrically "hysterical" performances, avant-garde puppet plays, and images created by Oskar Kokoschka, Koloman Moser, Egon Schiele and others, Nathan J. Timpano discusses how Viennese artists favored the pathological or puppet-like body as theircontribution to European modernism.

Cinema by Design

Book cover, 17.07.2018
| Published by coupDefouet

In Cinema by Design, Lucy Fischer traces Art Nouveau's long history in films from various decades and global settings, appreciating the movement's enduring avant-garde aesthetics and dynamic ideology.Art Nouveau thrived from the late 1890s through the First World War. The international design movement revelled in curvilinear forms and both playful and macabre visions and had a deep impact on cinematic art direction, costuming, gender representation, genre, and theme. Though historians have long dismissed Art Nouveau as a decadent cultural mode, its tremendous afterlife in cinema proves otherwise.

Giuseppe Sommaruga (1867-1917). Un protagonista del Liberty (Giuseppe Sommaruga (1867-1917): A Liberty Star) is the catalogue for the show that ran in Varese and Milan over spring and summer 2017, commemorating the centenary of Giuseppe Sommaruga's death and 150th anniversary of his birth. Sommaruga was not merely one of the major exponents of Italian Liberty, but also a daring innovator and avantgarde visionary who redefined Art Nouveau's very style.Andrea Speziali's monograph proposes a journey of discovery through Sommaruga's architectural legacy, making special reference to Varese and Milan. It deals with several of the period's emblematic themes, such as urban mansions, rental accommodation, funerary architecture and town and summer villas.

Galileo Chini frescoes discovered in an abandoned villa in Florence

Castelfiorentino (Florència), 03.04.2018
| Published by coupDefouet

Several frescoes by Galileo Chini (1873 - 1956), one of the major figures of Italian Liberty style, have been located in an abandoned villa on the outskirts of Castelfiorentino (Florence). They were discovered by Italia Liberty director Andrea Speziali based on some clues in Flickr, where photographer J. Dellagiacoma had posted several images of the frescoes. "They are undoubtedly the work of this major artist from Florence," claims Speziali after making comparisons and conducting research into the authenticity of the works.

The large frescoes decorate the walls of several of the rooms in the villa Cipressi and are not in the very best of conditions. Speziali has therefore proposed to the current owners of the building to raise funds in order to save Chini's paintings, an initiative that would also serve to organise a congress in Florence dedicated to Liberty style and Chini's work. Also part of the event would be the idea to create the first Liberty museum, a new cultural space that could indeed be located in the villa.

Ismael Smith. La bellesa i els monstres(Ismael Smith: The Beauty and the Monsters) is the catalogue of the exhibition presented at the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya from June to September 2017. The show covered Ismael Smith's full artistic trajectory, bringing together works from the many disciplines he practised, such as sculpture, drawing, illustration, poster art, interior design, ceramics, jewellery design, engraving, exlibris, as well as painting, a practically unknown facet of this artist.

Ismael Smith was one of the great Catalan sculptors of the twentieth century, but as a result of his transgressive production, he was labelled a satirical illustrator and trinket maker, never receiving the recognition he was due.